Kids Travel Activity Tray {Travel Tuesday}

Last Week on Frugal Ramblings I mentioned the road trip travel kit I made the boys. Basically they each have a kids travel activity tray that fits into a small reusable tote bag. I really like that each boy has their own, so there isn’t any fighting and that all the activities are quiet. My favorite part of the kits is that they are electronic free. Even though portable electronics are a mainstay of surviving our road trips, the boys can definitely use activities that encourage less “screen time” too.

In addition to several upcoming road trips, we also have a big airplane adventure to Chicago next month. The Chicago flight will be long, so I decided the kids travel activity tray needed a LEGO upgrade! The boys love playing with LEGO bricks!

I simply bought one lego base plate and cut it down to fit the small cookie sheet trays (I was able to get two good sized base plate for both boys out of the one I bought). Then I attached magnets (magnetic tape) to the back. The magnetic tape was sticky but definitely not enough to stay adhered to the lego base plate, so I broke out the hot glue gun!

I also upgraded the magnet portion of the kids travel activity tray by creating a nifty storage box for the magnets. I simply attached more magnets to the back of plastic pencil box from the dollar store.

The road trip is part of our travel adventure and it’s important to make it fun. A lot of our road trips are to Disneyland, so Disney themed coloring books are usually appropriate. However our upcoming trip includes LEGOLAND and Sea World visits. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to find LEGO or Sea World coloring books, so I turned to Google. Luckily I found free printable coloring pages on both sites, LEGO and Sea World! Google is your friend people! And my LEGO shirt template makes a fun coloring page too!

And since I had the hot glue gun out, I went ahead and added magnets to the crayon boxes too! Now their coloring pages and crayons will stay in place!

No upgrade here but i thought you’d want to see the whiteboards we have in our kids travel activity tray. By the way I picked up the smaller cookie sheets for a buck at the dollar store!

The beauty of these road trip kits is that they are cheap, easy to create and customize for your children’s needs. And if you put them away at home they remain fresh and “new-ish” for your kiddos when you travel!

All of the activities fit neatly in the small reusable Pluto totes that I found at the dollar store!

[…] My first attempt resulted in backpacks weighing 8 lbs, unfortunately the bulk of it was from our Travel Activity Trays. If we had roll on bags for the boys, I wouldn’t have worried about it. We don’t though […]

[…] The iPad is a total saving grace when traveling. Seriously how did we survive road trips without them growing up?! There are times when taking a break from the screen is necessary. Having a couple of fun low tech activity options with you is essential when your kids need/want a break or heaven forbid the iPad battery dies. What kind of nincompoop parents forgets to charge the tech up before they leave or at least bring a portable charger?? […]